Tuesday, August 19, 2008

First Day of School

Monday morning was back-to-school day for us. We've taken about 6 weeks off, so it hasn't been a huge break. And those weeks were busy ones, with dance camps, Vacation Bible School, illness (that business with the sore throats -- ugh), and even out-of-town visitors.

I thought we could get a gentle start in getting back into school mode. I thought Thalia could finish up Analytical Grammar -- of the 10 week course, she had already completed 9. And I thought AnnaBeth and I could work on either grammar or math.

Thalia pulled out her Analytical Grammar book and discovered that she'd never done the week 9 test. I vaguely remember something about that -- was that the week she got sick, perhaps, back in June? In any event, she took it yesterday and did an amazing job with it. The only mistake in parsing the sentences was calling a proper name "noun" rather than "proper noun". No mistakes in the questions, and the sentence diagrams were all perfect. I am impressed!

She also spent time with her Life of Fred Algebra 1 book, and reviewed Latin vocabulary. After that she worked on piano -- Monday afternoon was our first lesson in over 2 months, and the piano has barely been touched in that time.

AnnaBeth announced that she wanted to work on French, and maybe Latin. Huh? Certainly not what I had in mind. We pulled out the Minimus book for some Latin work, and tried to figure out where we left off. Aha, we seemed to be at the end of chapter 3, and spent time discussing derivatives of scribit (he writes), spectat (he watches) and laborant (they work), among others. She had been hopping around saying that she wanted to do some copywork or dictation, so I suggested she make some Latin flashcards. This project seemed to take care of her need to write things out. I also pointed out that she is welcome at any time to pick up a pen or pencil and start writing -- copy poetry or quotations, write stories, write a letter.

After Latin we worked on First Language Lessons Level 3, amid much gushing that she loves this curriculum (which is not at all what she was saying about it last spring, but absence makes the heart grow fonder). She completed lesson 30, which featured sentence diagramming.

As for French, it will have to wait. I'd like to try a new program, so we'll have to order one.

We also got back into the swing of our numerous read alouds. We are working our way through Ambleside Online Year 2. We read about King Stephen, who reigned mid-12th century in Britain, in Our Island Story, and about Anselm, who was in Normandy and at Canterbury during the 11th century, in Trial And Triumph. We also continued our perpetual reading of Little House books, which is currently towards the end of These Happy Golden Years.

Piano lesson was fun. AnnaBeth commented that it seemed odd to be going to something that was not dance (we have been to many, many dance lessons this summer -- probably too many). Aside from getting instruction and new lessons, we also re-acquainted ourselves with Mrs. Piano Teacher's dogs and cats -- always a good time.

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About Me

We are a homeschooling family that includes a 15 year old and a 11 year old. We use our blog to keep in touch with family and friends, letting them know what projects we're working on.
For the sake of privacy, the kids have chosen pseudonyms from Percy Jackson books.